Off World Trading Company; Jupiter’s Forge Expansion Released

For those of you familiar with StarDock's game, Off World Trading Company, they've just released some new content. It's an interesting twist on an already interesting game. If you haven't played yet, we definitely urge you to check it out. This game has a unique combination of business, survival, tech and, of course, space exploration.

What Is Off World Trading Company?

The way you start out in Off World Trading Company (OWTC for short) is as a company selected to make the colonization of Mars profitable. In the year 2063, the earth is reeling from economic disasters. Asteroid mining, which was supposed to lift earth out of it's slump, was taken over by an evil conglomerate. The state-sponsored Mars settlements have failed and now private enterprise is taking the lead. That's you.

OWTC is still considered an MMORTS, instead of military forces though, money is your shock troops. You will out-wit your competitors, trade resources in the player-driven marketplace, fill in the gaps in your production line by purchasing raw materials as well as selling your own that you mined with your blood, sweat and dollars from the martian surface.

Jupiter's Forge Expansion

The new DLC released brings a whole new challenge to OWTC. By bringing the arduous location of Io, Jupiter's volcanic moon, to the fore. Io brings a whole new set of obstacles to overcome, such as the complete lack of water (kind of need that). Aside from the environment, you'll also face two new factions, the menacingly named Penrose Collective and The Diadem Trust.

StarDock also added a new campaign as well as resource system to adapt to Io's unforgiving environment. You'll now have to deal with the absence of plenty of essentials that were available on Mars but not here. The new multiplayer mode "Infinite Maps" also brings endless hours of game play when you go head to head with other players where no two maps are the same.

If you're a fan of the original OWTC, you can't go wrong with the latest DLC. If you haven't played, it may be an acquired taste to some, but if you're a fan of city-building and resource management games like SimCity, this takes it to a whole new world (pun intended). It's worth the buy and it's virtually guaranteed to kill a few hours of free time.

Gaming since '95, began InfoGamer in June of 2017 to bring a new twist to gaming media and reporting. Brandon contributes the weekly Out Of Box hardware review as well as other articles for InfoGamer. Follow Brandon on Twitter or Google+ for more!